Latest Barred spiral galaxies Stories

Starburst galaxies transmute gas into new stars at a dizzying pace - up to 1,000 times faster than typical spiral galaxies like the Milky Way. To help understand why some galaxies "burst" while others do not, an international team of astronomers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to dissect a cluster of star-forming clouds at the heart of NGC 253, one of the nearest starburst galaxies to the Milky Way.

According to NASA, galaxies can come in many different shapes and sizes, and their orientation relative to us can sometimes make them look even more bizarre than usual. The new photo of the so-called “Little Sombrero” got us thinking: What are some of the most unusual galaxies ever discovered by astronomers? Here are a few of our favorites.

With the help of citizen scientists, a team of astronomers has found an important new example of a very rare type of galaxy that may yield valuable insight on how galaxies developed in the early Universe.

Astronomers usually have to peer very far into the distance to see back in time, and view the Universe as it was when it was young. This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of galaxy DDO 68, otherwise known as UGC 5340, was thought to offer an exception.

When galaxies grow too massive to continue making their own stars, they begin cannibalizing other nearby galaxies, experts from the University of Western Australia and an international team of colleagues reported this week in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

When galaxies first form they are dominated by gas that is, over time, lays the foundation for stars. As more stars form the gas becomes locked up in stellar objects and their core remnants, such as white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. Eventually, the gas will become depleted, leaving a behind a cold dead galaxy.

Stephan's Quintet in the constellation Pegasus is a visual grouping of five galaxies which four form the first compact galaxy group ever discovered. The group was discovered by Ã‰douard Stephan in 1877 at Marseilles Observatory and is the most studied of all the compact galaxy groups. NGC 7320, which has extensive H II regions, is the brightest member of the visual grouping and is where active star formation is occurring.
Hickson Compact Group 92, which contains four of the five...

Robert's Quartet is four different galaxies in the process of colliding and merging. The galaxies reside in the Phoenix constellation approximately 160 million light-years away. Its members are NGC 87, NGC 88, NGC 89 and NGC 92, discovered by John Herschel in the 1830s.
The quartet is one of the best examples of compact groups of galaxies. Since such groups contain four to eight galaxies in a very small area, they provide great laboratories for the study of galactic interactions and their...

Spiral Galaxy -- Among the galaxies, there are apparently three main categories, according to their appearance: the disk galaxies (`cosmic frisbies' according to P. Murdin, D. Allen, and D. Malin), consisting of a huge disk of stars and interstellar matter, which may form interesting patterns, the elliptical galaxies (`cosmic footballs') which are uniformly looking, ellipsoidal agglomerations of stars, and the irregular galaxies (`cosmic misfits') which cannot be integrated in this scheme....

Seyfert's Sextet -- Seyfert's Sextet is a group of galaxies in which gravitational forces are exerted between its members.
The galaxies are so tightly packed together that gravitational forces are beginning to rip stars from them and distort their shapes. Those same gravitational forces eventually could bring the galaxies together to form one large galaxy.
The name of this grouping, Seyfert's Sextet, implies that six galaxies are participating in the action. But only four galaxies are...

Circinus Galaxy -- Resembling a swirling witch's cauldron of glowing vapors, the black hole-powered core of a nearby active galaxy appears in this colorful NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. The galaxy lies 13 million light-years away in the southern constellation Circinus.
This galaxy is designated a type 2 Seyfert, a class of mostly spiral galaxies that have compact centers and are believed to contain massive black holes. Seyfert galaxies are themselves part of a larger class of objects...